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National Green Tribunal restrains Himachal Pradesh governmentt from proceeding with Draft Development Plan, 2041

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The National Green Tribunal has restrained the Himachal Pradesh government from going ahead with Draft Development Plan, 2041, which allows rampant construction in the hilly state.

“We find the observations and proposals in the plan of the state of HP to be patently illegal in view of submissions noted above,” NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said after hearing a plea filed by Yogendra Mohan Sengupta, a Shimla-based environmentalist.

The plea was challenging the Draft Development plan on the ground that it is contrary to the sustainable development principle and destructive to the environment and public safety.

The petitioner relied upon the Expert Committee reports based on NGT’s 2017 order which has already issued regulatory measures required to be adopted in terms of the number of floors, and restrictions on constructions in core green areas.

In the order, the tribunal said, if the state proceeds in such a manner, not only it will damage rule of law, it may result in disastrous consequences for the environment and public safety.

“It is not expected from a lawful government that has to work as per law and the Constitution and not at its fancies as appears to be the case,” read the order dated May 12.

Pulling up the Chief Secretary of the state, the tribunal said: “Chief Secretary should be personally held liable for prosecution for such patent illegal acts of the State authorities.”

Also, issuing show-cause notices to the respondents, the bench directed the state to file their responses within one month. The Tribunal also said that the applicant might serve a set of papers on the Chief Secretary to file an affidavit of service within one week, stating meanwhile, it restrains the Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Planning Department from taking any further steps in pursuance of the Draft Development Plan, 2041.

The matter will be further heard on July 22. The plea contended that the earlier directions of the tribunal are still holding the field. It said the draft plan is an illegal and ill-conceived effort to violate the binding directions of the Tribunal under Section 15 of the NGT. Under Section 33 of the said Act, the NGT Act has overriding effect over any other law in force.

Violating such directions is a criminal punishable offence under Section 26 of the NGT Act. Heads of concerned Departments of the State are liable to be prosecuted for such offence under Section 28 of the said Act, it stated.

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Meta launches ‘Muse Voice Transcribe’ with native support for five Indian languages

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New Delhi, Sep 2: US-based technology giant Meta has introduced its first real‑time audio‑perception model — Muse Voice Transcribe — which offers native support for five major Indian languages and advanced streaming features.

Muse Voice Transcribe — developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs — delivers streaming transcription, speaker separation across over 20 voices in hour‑plus recordings, native code‑switching and diarisation from a single model with no post‑processing step, the company said in a statement.

Muse Voice Transcribe is trained across over 70 languages spoken in multiple countries with 25 validated at launch.

“It ranks first on the Artificial Analysis streaming speech-to-text leaderboard as of September 1, 2026,” the statement added.

Available via the Meta Model API and already running dictation in Meta AI for Mac and Muse Code, Muse Voice Transcribe delivers real‑time automatic speech recognition, diarisation with over 20 speakers and endpointing.

It is multilingual with seamless code-switching and improves accuracy with language, keyword, and context biasing.

“The longer the model waits to predict, the more accurate the transcript, but the higher the latency. Muse Voice Transcribe has “adaptive delay,” dynamically changing delay for each word based on difficulty,” the statement noted.

This is enabled with reinforcement learning (RL), where word error rate (WER) reward and a delay reward are combined multiplicatively.

“Muse Voice Transcribe is an autoregressive multimodal model from the Muse Spark family,” Meta said.

It explained that the audio is processed in 80 ms chunks (12.5 Hz), each of which is transformed into a single soft token. At each audio chunk, the model decides to either continue listening to the next audio chunk or emit a text token.

With adaptive delay, Muse Voice Transcribe achieves the Pareto front on speed-accuracy trade-off measured by time to final transcription, the company said.

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Annu Projects shares list at 27 pc discount against IPO price

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New Delhi, Sep 2: Annu Projects shares made a weak debut on the stock exchanges on Wednesday and have listed at a discount of up to 27 per cent to the issue price.

The stock listed at Rs 75 on the BSE, a discount of 24.24 per cent to the issue price of Rs 99.

Meanwhile, on the National Stock Exchange, the stock debuted at Rs 72, down 27.27 per cent from the offer price. In addition, the stock declined as much as 28 per cent in early trading hours, hitting an intraday low of Rs 71.25.

The company’s initial public offering received bids for 5.18 crore shares against 1.76 crore shares on offer, resulting in an overall subscription of 2.93 times.

The IPO comprised an entirely fresh issue of up to 1.7683 crore equity shares with a face value of Rs 10 each, with no offer-for-sale component.

Moreover, the company showed several key risks in its IPO offer document like business concentration in telecom and sewerage segments, which together contributed 94 per cent of FY26 revenue, higher revenue dependence on government clients of up to 65 per cent in FY26, customer concentration in which top 10 customer contribution 98 per cent each in FY25 & FY26.

Annu Projects plans to use Rs 15.408 crore of the net proceeds to fund capital expenditure for the purchase of machinery and equipment, while Rs 115 crore will be used to meet working capital requirements. The remaining proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.

The price band for the issue was fixed at Rs 94-99 per share with investors allowed to bid in lots of 151 shares.

The issue had reserved 10 per cent of the issue for qualified institutional buyers, 40 per cent for non-institutional investors and 50 per cent for retail investors.

Established in 2003, Annu Projects is engaged in the design, development, implementation, operations and maintenance of overhead and underground utilities infrastructure across telecom, sewerage, gas pipeline and railway signalling segments.

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7.8 pc GDP growth reflects country’s progress: Maha CM Fadnavis, Dy CM Shinde

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Mumbai/Thane, Sep 1: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Tuesday hailed India as it registered a real GDP growth rate of 7.8 per cent in the first quarter of the 2026–27 financial year (Q1 FY27, April–June 2026) under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi reflecting the country’s progress.

Chief Minister Fadnavis in his post on social media platform X said, “Yehi hai right choice, Bharat! Let’s keep going the same way, same direction. 7.8 per cent growth in such times prove our potential and possibilities as a Nation with PM @narendramodi’s leadership! Congratulations Bharat!”

On the other hand, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said that India’s economy continues to demonstrate strong growth with a 7.8 per cent GDP expansion at a time when several nations globally are grappling with conflict and economic fallout.

“This reflects economic progress and stability, this marks another key step toward achieving the vision of ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’,” The Deputy Chief Minister added.

Speaking to reporters on the country’s economic outlook, Deputy CM Shinde expressed confidence that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is moving steadily toward becoming an economic superpower and achieving its target of a $5 trillion economy.

He assured that the Maharashtra government will contribute significantly to this journey.

Highlighting the adverse global backdrop, the Deputy Chief Minister noted that ongoing wars and geopolitical conflicts have impacted multiple world economies.

“In contrast, India’s 7.8 per cent growth rate presents a highly promising picture and signals the nation’s rising economic strength.”

Deputy CM Shinde emphasised that every citizen should take pride in the nation’s strengthening economy.

However, he criticised the opposition parties for taking a negative stance on national progress due to political bias against PM Modi.

He remarked that appeals made by the Prime Minister are always aimed at national interest, upliftment, and growth, but are often viewed through a narrow political lens by his critics.

“Instead of questioning progress, everyone should contribute toward accelerating development,” Deputy Chief Minister Shinde added.

Reaffirming the state’s commitment, the Deputy CM said that Maharashtra will fully cooperate with the Central government to reach the $5 trillion target and realise the ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’ roadmap.

He asserted that India’s economic strides are a matter of pride for all 140 crore citizens, adding that the public will appropriately respond to those opposing the country’s growth.

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